Wedding Guide

Your wedding is one of the most important times of your life, it symbolizes love, and will determine your future. It goes without saying that it requires a great deal of effort and consideration in regards to planning every single thing. It is not only incredibly easy to become overwhelmed, but it is highly likely that you will probably be sending up smoke signals for rescue at some point. At that point, you may want to see if your budget will allow you to afford hiring a wedding planner in some capacity. Fortunately for us, the Dallas area offers a great deal of professional wedding planners, one of them will be the right one to help relieve some of the stress of planning the event. If you need some help, here is a short guide to help you find a good planner.

The first step is to establish the capacity you will need a planner to help based on your budget and necessities. You will have three options. The first option is a full-service planner that will organize and coordinate the entire event, leaving you to handle unimportant details that will relieve you of the stress of it all. The second option is to hire someone just to advise you on venues and vendors, and if need be, they will handle all the booking for you. The third option is to use a “day-of coordinator”, although most of these types of coordinators actually start a couple weeks up to a month ahead of the date of your wedding. It may seem like good fiscal discipline to do all the planning yourself, and avoid wedding planner costs, but your planner may actually end up saving you money because of their rapport with vendors and venues.

Once you have establish the capacity of help you will need, you should start off with the recommendations of friends, family, and trusted colleagues. You should also consult online wedding directories as they are chocked full of good information such as pricing, reviews, and testimonials. Pick the candidates that are highly acclaimed for your list. Before you schedule interviews with each planner, be sure to have an approximate number of guests, the preferred date of the wedding, and your vision for the event. Once you have your preliminary details handled, go ahead and place calls, and ask if the candidate is available on the date of your wedding.

You should come prepared with plenty of questions, both personal and business related. You should ask them of their experience, and how many weddings they have worked and work on a yearly average. It is important to become personally connected with the wedding planner, because you need to be comfortable with them and trust them implicitly. If there is no chemistry there, then you should consider a different candidate. Before you end the meeting with them, go over their costs and the way they arrange payments. Some planners may charge by the hour, by percentage of total wedding costs, or a simple flat rate. You should definitely leave with a handful of referrals to see if they have satisfied other clients in the past.

Now that you feel closer to the right planner, comparing costs and perks of service, you should arrange for a contract to be signed by both of you that outlines every detail and charge. If you did your due diligence, and you like this person, there will be no issue that arises that they cannot handle professionally for you.